Susak expo 2018

#susakexpo2018

SUSAK EXPO

“Susak expo 2006 began as an idea to extend platforms by exchanges of contexts and languages through dialogues between people and locations. It’s an idea on the move, an idea in translation. Translation can slip between languages to structure networks of thought. It enables simultaneous experiences to interact. It is vulnerable and open to incompletion as well as failure and misunderstanding. The project may fail or it may succeed; its outcome and even the idea of its completion is uncertain. Because of this openness, it is vulnerable, this is its character”.

— Jo Melvin, 2006.

Susak expo is a contemporary art biennale founded by Herzog Dellafiore and Daniel Devlin that has taken place on the island of Susak, Croatia since 2006. The original reason for organising the Susak expo was as a reaction to the art fairs, biennales and museums of contemporary art sprouting up everywhere. The founders wanted to highlight the absurdity of this proliferation by staging an international art biennale in the most unlikely of places where very few people other
than the Susakians and the artists themselves get to see it.

Because of the remoteness of Susak and its distance from the beaten art world track, objects created or shown during the expo stop having significance and value as objects d’art — very few people will see the objects in the flesh and almost certainly no collector will be offering money for them. By forcefully asserting what Susak expo is not, this event then becomes a ten day symposium on what the art act could be. What then becomes central to Susak expo is the experience and the interaction between the participating artists (sharing time and ideas), and those objects serve as props and when the expo is over, all that will remain will be its documentation and the anecdotes (possibly exaggerated and embellished) and those objects will remain there for a while, like traces … like strange artist droppings.

Participating artists have to accept the concept and possibility of failure, or even to embrace failure as a desirable outcome. The possibility of failure ensures the unpredictability of the expo. Susak expo is not just about isolation; it sits within a wider context. Whether politically or geographically, artists are encouraged to respond to the place and to reconsider their own practices.

Susak expo has taken place every two years, and, although it has evolved, it has remained faithful to its original philosophy where experimentation and exchanging ideas, as opposed to making art objects, are at its core.

Although I want to be as helpful as I can to all participants, I am unable to make detailed arrangements for such things as travel or accommodation. As a participating artist you are expected to organise and pay for your travel, accommodation and living expenses. You will find practical information below that should help you to do so and, of course, I encourage you to work together to make your plans and answer questions.

You will receive no money from Susak expo, but neither will there be any fee to participate. (The only thing that you would have to pay is if you want one of your photographs to be shown in the exhibition in the Museum of Mali Lošinj, in which case you will pay for the printing. This should be relatively inexpensive and, of course, is optional. More information below.)

The way it works is that there is no real plan or schedule. It’s best if you come to the island with an open mind, even with an acceptance that you might end up not doing anything. Artists will be staying in different places and as individuals or in groups. The island is very small, so we will all be interacting, sharing ideas, conversations and thoughts very quickly. The important thing is that you will be autonomous artists.

Susak expo will run a calendar where artists can schedule events: for example, a performance on Bok beach, a symposium in Osman’s Café, an installation outside the Klub, poetry reading in a vineyard, or an exhibition of watercolours in “House 600” (if you rent a house, you can use it as a temporary gallery). You will also be able to connect with other artists to collaborate on projects.

Selected photographic documentation of these events will be printed A1 and exhibited in the Museum of Mali Lošinj. The museum has twenty-two A1 black frames, so, if there are more than 22 entries, then a selection will have to be made.

Once I have confirmation of all the artists who would like to participate, you will be able to connect with each other and perhaps share travel, accommodation or art plans.

If you like, you can send me a short text and a vague idea of what you propose to do during the expo and a couple of images. I would like to gradually announce (on website / Facebook / Instagram) the artists participating in Susak Expo 2018.

It’s a converted boat and is in the port next to where you take the catamaran. It used to be cheap, but I just checked and it is not as cheap as it was in the past. If you share a quadruple room or stay in the dormitory, it’s much more affordable. Marina used to link many of the islands and has an interesting history.

As with Trieste, you take a bus or taxi form the airport to town and then a bus to Rijeka. You might feel adventurous and take a catamaran to the island of Unite and then from there wait for the catamaran from Rijeka which stops in Unije on the way to Susak. But if something goes wrong, you risk being stranded in Unije. Also, a taxi can be arranged.

Zagreb

This is pretty good, as there are plenty of buses from airport to town and then from Zagreb to Rijeka. A taxi can be arranged but it’s slightly more expensive.

Ljubljana

Same as Zagreb, but buses to Rijeka are not so frequent.

Venice

This is a bit further away, but last summer we found really cheap flights to Venice. So, we took advantage of that and stayed a couple of nights in an airbnb in Venice and then took the train to Trieste. The train takes a couple of hours to Trieste and only costs around £15 per person (It’s only in the UK that trains are slow and cost a fortune). And then from Trieste you take a bus to Rijeka.

Zadar

Check it out. If you find a bargain, it might be worth it. But it’s not so straight forward.

FOOD:

Susak has a restaurant, a cafe and a place where you can have pizzas, but there is no food shop, so it’s good to stock up on food in Rijeka. Rijeka has a great fruit and veg market very close to the port where you take the catamaran. There is also a bakery on Susak which sells pizzas, Burek and pastries (and bread, of course).

NEW!!!! There is a new food shop in Susak.

In the words of Georg “new shop much cheaper and really nice Young People! you can order burek also sir meso and mexican style(very good!!)”

There is also a boat that sails from Susak to Mali Lošinj every norning (it takes about 1 hour) and comes back around lunchtime. There, there are shops, supermarkets and even a LIDL.

Here is the timetable for the boat that goes from Susak to Mali Lošinj:

QWERTY is going to Susak to save souls. They will wander the dusty paths of the island, in search of people and SALVATION.

QWERTY is a group consisting of 7 artists who have worked together the past 9 years with collective exhibitions. Rather than conventional object based art forms, QWERTY has been preoccupied with the relational aesthetics and the interplay with the regional and local environment/context.

Statement: With the ubiquitous digital image taking centre stage and the decline of the printed photograph, Charlie presents the printed photograph through painting and installation as a thin receipt or a fossil…a half truth, a trace, possibly a clue to the past.

Bio: After studying fine art at Reading University 1988-1991 under Richard Wilson, Ron Haseldon and Rose Finn-Kelcey, Charlie taught art for three years and then moved abroad in 1994 for several years to live in Prague, Lisbon and London, where he worked as an artist, designer, art director and photographer. In 2004 Charlie moved to Montpellier, France, where he lives with his partner and their three boys.

“I am the lost Viking two years astray , swept by the north winds and with a Bad case of the runes.
The travels are long and arduous but the experience outweighs the destination. The stories to collect and be told over fires and seafood. I sail the islands …only to find what I find and the fate of Norns shall lead me to many odd and people.

…and I bake! A legend in my own lunchtime.

I started as painter studying at St Helens College for my BA moving on to Chelsea where I realised that the Painting was a document of a far more vital process . At Chelsea I embraced the performative , sculptural and curational values of my practice. I attended Susak in 2016 and it has changed my view if the art world beyond the realms of my comfort zones . I recently curated the “glitch” aesthetics of failure exhibition at Wigan Old Courts featuring many international and local artists .

The Carousel Institute of Arts exists somewhere between an alpaca farm in the East Midlands of England, and a mountain woodland on the west coast of Wales.

At the centre of our work is our community of family and close circle of friends, we offer low technology residencies for artists, many of whom work collaboratively with us on a wide variety of artworks, parades and performance.

‘This is our lamp post”
For Susak we intend to build castles around the island, temporarily laying claim to areas of interest in the name of art. Ceremonies and parades around the grounds of the castles may be performed and recorded to legitimise the right for art to exist within that location.

In the time of the end of history and ethical crisis, it is unthinkable to engage in anything else but ethics. In this endeavour, I move from art towards life. I abandon form (as illusion) and emphasise the content instead; I live the answers to the questions I pose as an artist. This emphasis has a form, but it becomes less visible; its effect disappear, there are no embellishments; the message stands out, like a naked medium. In this ‘digital era’ my main concern is the redefinition of art with the idea that digital media’s sterility has snuffed out content and that’s what is seen as the ‘death of art’, the disappearance of the unclear, the magic of the media and touch of the hand.

The future of art does not lie in new forms and ambiguous questions, but in a true content, it is time for clear answers. Such a dramatic conclusion derives from the awareness that the technological man is striving towards ‘general knowledge’ and ‘direct link’ to the digital. I see it as a critical moment of losing our humanity, space of free will and resistance. The only artistic discourse, as I see it, is the race between man (artist) and artificial intelligence to absolute knowledge.

Fortunately for Devlin, he has just enough charisma, just enough hint of vulnerability, to fool his audience into believing in the sincerity of his soul-searching, the real agony behind his tormented artist act. In the first scene of “Dokumentary”, we find Devlin sitting in a darkened room, face obscured in the shadows. With muffled voice, Devlin makes a pathetic plea of victimhood like the reformed criminal in a crime investigation series: ‘I never intended to cause any harm to anybody… It was never my intention to mislead anyone.’ In a society that raises the bar ever higher for personal achievement and ambition, failure becomes an acceptable, even desirable outcome to hopes and dreams, and Devlin’s work relies on our ability to empathise with his constant failures. Yet when, like Devlin, one tries very little to achieve anything, failure becomes a reassuringly inevitability, an effortless alternative to the stressful expectations that result from accomplishing goals.

When Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history in 1989, he also exposed the inherent limitations of postmodern art, an art doomed to recycle itself. All that had been hailed as achievements of postmodern thought – an end to the tyranny of originality, an end to fascist ideology – was revealed to have an unpleasant corollary: an end to the possibility of change. In the 21st century, then, it’s no longer feasible to appropriate postmodern strategies wholesale without appearing to support the status quo, a position increasingly untenable in a new century blighted by violence and intolerance. Devlin’s practice, however, relies on pilfering and recycling art from the past. He re-enacts past artworks – Bas Jan Ader’s Fall, for example, in which the artists cycles straight into a canal – in the manner of the worst pop music cover version: as a vulgar marketing ploy. He usurps the romantic, tragic status of Jan Ader in order to win the compassion and respect of which he is so undeserving.

My work is insatiable and conspicuously a visual form. The basis and inspiration for my work derived from events of cultural history as well as textual analysis. My work investigates human experience through memory and belongingness.I use varied medium – painting,
drawing, installation, photography, and sculpture.

My practice drawn on continuous process of creating and erasing through deep manifestation of mark making whilst retaining traces of what has gone before. I believe nothing in life can be replicated exactly. My artwork bares witness to this through the illustration of printing, imprinting, reprinting and returning and gathering, until the technique of this layering arrives to the desire creation entirely by accident through repetition and superimposition.

The tradition of feminist discourse is imbedded in my practice through its immediacy and sensuality. However, I am conscious not to appear didactic, but only to merely transmit my concept to subvert the notion and respond to our collective history and culture in a humorous way I tend to choose materials that are delicate in nature.

I relish the dichotomy of the materials – ossified as well as fragile and delicate; rough but elegant. My work does not go out of its way to be aesthetically pleasing. It is organic, true to itself.

She has a degree in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University (Providence, USA), and received her design degree from the European Institute of Design in Milan, Italy has studied at the Applied Arts Academy (UMPRUM) of Prague, illustration and painting, film at the FAMU (Film Academy of Prague) Czech Republic and print making in Venice, Italy.

For years Gaella has been traveling the world working and collaborating with local communities in Africa, Europe and Asia doing projects that worked on traditional crafts to sustainable design, to using art as a means of empowerment.

She has worked as an artist, muralist, illustrator, graphic novelist, curator and art director.
She is a firm believer that art should bring social good. In her work she is always trying to promote social and ecological awareness as well as cultural heritage.

For Susak she will be doing a site specific work on the island, using found objects both trash washed up on the shore to natural materials to make a installation dealing with all that falls or floats to the island…

In 2016, May 12, on Susak island, Croatia, I’ve worked on a video that I later called ‘Becoming An Island’.�My idea for the installation was to plant a video screen in a side of sand hill that the whole island is made of. �I spent many hours walking the island and found that I was somehow in the wide open space of the island and felt that I needed to find a way to remove myself from the public.�In my mind I was thinking about feeling safe from the outside world.

VIDEO:

FUTURE PLANNING OFFICE
The project presented is for the further development of post-transitional society(ies) and the Central-Southern European potential for expressive expansion. There will be focus on Balkan region in general and a micro focus with the principle ‘laboratory’ of design in Rijeka/Susak. This is a project with consideration to grow and will be seen as such through its nascence and into its continuation as an entity within the community(ies).

Subjects of focus will be:
The Collective (Un)consciousness – Ethics of the ‘other’ – a vital field in any area considering intellectual, cultural, and artistic integration will be applied to pieces that will challenge our conception of ourselves in relation to ‘others’. Research of shared values and applied philosophical analysis will aid in the understanding of this mission.

Social Speculations – Our primary initiative in this field is the promotion of the autonomous, authentic, and self-realized person working as a part of the current system. Its aim is to incorporate the individual mechanism to be a subjective and projective ideal concerning a new form of the work space. These individuals are imagined to work in multi-context, multidisciplinary and interactive workspaces. This is the idea of the ‘Future Planning Office’, where such examples of new ideas include: intersubjective policy on art and culture; art for art, not for business; and ‘Love of the game’ ( or ‘Joga Bonito’ ) community programs for the communities varied demographics. Consideration of methodology and technology will be the central strategy as we merge many fields and peoples to speculate on possible origins for new design. An example of such a project could be: alternative economic models and systems intuition (questions of equity and allocation of resources) and the form of the horizontal job market and horizontal economic development. Our first (meta)physical representation will be held at the Susak Expo 2018, on the island of Susak, Croatia.

Psychosocial Development – Considering the idea of the ‘veil of ignorance’ interest in the citizen as having the inherent right to opportunity, community integration, education, vocalize opinion, and artistic expression will be part of our mission. To do this we will work with communities to understand themselves as citizens and to consider the community as a family.

Popular Culture and the Internet – Considering the postmodern era there will be play with ideas of the news in what can be called ‘future oriented designer news’. Social media will also play a role as we consider the transformation of these platforms in technology as possible community institutions.

And Finally,
Social Installations – Rearranging relations, habits, customs, interactions, knowledge, and sharing in a form of art installation theory. Our foundation and form of expression will be through this medium and will consistently be integrated in the communities in which we share our vision and mission.
Keltner, Mortimer, Grdic

Dominik Grdic is a new media artist and producer born in Rijeka, Croatia in 1983. He has a BA in Painting and Art Pedagogy, now finishing MA in Intermedia, with focus on media arts and practices, both from the University of Rijeka.
Dominik has a long history of working with local NGO’s. He is a local educator who has created student projects, with both local and international students. Has worked in the Students Cultural Center as a program manager, coordinator, gallery curator, and visual PR designer. He’s engaged in development of Center for Innovative Media, at the University of Rijeka project for integrating art and science students. As well, he is the program manager of the emerging NGO ‘Akumulator’ (2017) whose mission is the creation of a designing platform for advanced/alternative education and collaboration in contemporary arts and practices.

Andrew Keltner is an applied philosophy student born in 1989 in Taos, New Mexico. He has a BUS in Political Science and Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico and is currently a student of Philosophical Counseling and Consultancy at the West University of Timisoara in Timisoara, Romania.
He is currently finishing his MA in Philosophy where he studies relationships and definitions of citizenship in a constitutional and neoliberal context. He has also been awarded a scholarship and works to understand human and digital connections and their ethical and epistemological consequences in the political sphere.

Nicholas Mortimer is an artist and educator born in 1983 in St. Albans, UK. His BA is in Fine Art Sculpture from the University of Brighton and an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London.
His practice explores relations between perceptions of reality, systems of control and the blurred boundaries of fact and fiction. Current work explores histories of technology being used to reflect outcomes of an expanded computational world. Issues surrounding the notion of work, production, decision and change all combine in a search for new narrative spaces created between data and knowledge, speed and attention, spaces which are home to changing behaviours enabled by technology of all kinds.

And…

Just some additional notes:

Nicholas just got a baby so he’s staying in UK and will be joining us virtualy.

Once on Susak, we’ll be doing research part of our on-going project. Probably doing some tests. Filming. Writing. Consulting. Make a piece, or some live action?

Andrew is a great cook.

I’ve got some new tricks in the kitchen. So, I propose making dinner for one of the evenings.

Gianfranco Mirizzi is a visual artist living and working in Rijeka, Croatia.
His artistic research concerns configuration of space as a totalizing entity that affects a subject’s perceptive, intuitive, and emotional response in a set of eventualities. He works with digital arts, architecture and performance to articulate immersive interactive and self generative environments. He also has been working in a number of video projects, collaborating with such artists as John Sturgeon, Fred Worden, Lee Boot, and Steve Yeager. His works have been seen in a variety of settings in US (Washington DC, Baltimore, Towson and Salisbury) and Europe.

During the last three years he’s been engaged in an international artist research on games, within the European art platform Corners of Europe (http://www.cornersofeurope.org/), performing in Taranto, Newcastle, Rijeka, Ljubljana, Maribor, Zagreb and Durham. Currently, as cofounder of newly born artist association ArtTeatar Boum!, he’s conducting an interdisciplinary research on new media and strategies of active participation in the crossing boundaries of Digital Arts and Theatre.

Andrea Crnković is a theatre artist dedicated in developing new poetic language, creative methods and stimulative processes to engage the audience on multiple levels through suggestive, intimate experiences. She investigates interdisciplinary approach to theatre intertwining it with film/video, visual and digital arts, music and architecture. She experiments with implementation of new technology and innovative use of lights and sound aiming to enhance the experience of theatre and critically talk about human experience in 21st century. Andrea worked on a number of projects as author, director, actor and designer in United States and Europe, where she also participated in various festivals and manifestations, collaborated with theatre companies and institutions. She is author and co-author of several video installations exhibited in US, Croatia, Slovenia and Germany.
Currently Andrea lives in Rijeka and works as a free-lance artist. She is a co-founder of artistic organization ArtTeatar BOUM! and serves as its artistic director. She also serves as a board member of the NGO for performative arts Prostor Plus, Rijeka.

Gianfranco participated in Susak Expo 2016, building the first architecture dedicated specifically to the event, a Book Shop made of bamboo canes tied according to a local technique learned from Dida, an 84 years old craftsman he met on the island.

In this new edition of Susak Expo 2018 Gianfranco and Andrea’s aim is to engage collaboratively with ideas of memory and historical stratification. For this purpose they are seeking ways to activate ephemeral experiences of de-location, presence and enactment, in order to explore possible alternatives and un-historical meanings, within the rich and diverse context of Susak.

I am from Winnipeg, Canada and live and work in Beijing, China. I travel a lot and my work is almost always directly influenced from wherever I am. Traveling from country-to-country, I am constantly challenged with new languages and cultural difference – this has taught me that how we act in new countries or situations has an equal impact to knowing the customs or language. Travel has influenced my street performances as well did the silver and silent screen era. Ideas behind my installation works borrow from David Bowie’s song title “Sound and Vision”, and raise the question of what happens when they are not in sync or replaced? As a musician, I find the performance-to-audience phenomena fascinating and it influences my artwork a great deal in one-way or another.

My mediums include performance, video, photo, audio, installation and sculpture. Up and coming exhibitions include the Susak Art Expo, Croatia, and the Jinghuan Museum, China. I have been invited to exhibit across Canada, USA, England, Croatia, South Korea and China.